A new international treaty will add another layer of legal restrictions on audiovisual performances by giving the performers—actors, musicians, dancers and others—a new copyright-like right that will exist alongside copyright.

As has beenwidelyreported, an official Romney campaign ad that showed President Obama singing a line from the Al Green song "Let's Stay Together" has been hit with a takedown from BMG Rights Management — the group that controls the publishing rights of the original song — and pulled from YouTube. The takedown is an obvious abuse of the DMCA process: the ad was a clear fair use and therefore noninfringing.

Last week, at the latest round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations in San Diego, California, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced that it has proposed a new provision on limitations and exceptions to copyright. It's nice to hear about a proposal that seems to expand limitations like fair use, and it is also nice to see that – finally - the USTR is listening to the technology industries. However, the draft treaty itself is still secret so the implications of this new provision are in fact ambiguous. We can’t know what their proposal means for copyright without knowing what’s in the rest of the chapter.